CT residents lending a helping hand to Texas during Hurricane Harvey

HARTFORD -- Berlin police said their own officer Dave Cruickshank is en route to Texas where he will be joining the National Disaster Medical Team from Connecticut and will be in charge of field hospital security for the Federal Government.

FOX61 spoke to the local chapter of the Red Cross who currently have a dozen staff members deployed to Texas and southwestern Louisiana. The majority, which are volunteers, have been in Texas since Thursday, lasting through the night into Friday morning.

The volunteers will be setting up feeding operations, sheltering operations for the expected thousands of people who will be facing damaging winds and a forecasted three feet of rainfall.

Richard Branigan, Chief Operating Officer of American Red Cross, said “I think we’re going to be sending people for a while. This is a massive storm of record proportions, so unfortunately for the folks down in Texas, they’re going to be dealing with this for the next 48 hours to 72 hours and then the aftermath well beyond that.”

Connecticut’s Red Cross volunteers are utilizing disaster relief vans for the coming days as well.

They will also be partnering with local government officials and FEMA while on the ground. They will also have nursing staff on hand as well as trained disaster mental health staff.

The Red Cross emphasizes that this storm will leave lasting and grave impacts potentially for weeks to come, as the national weather service uses phrases like “life-threatening, dangerous, and catastrophic” to describe the storm.